Meeting at Night

“Meeting at Night” is divided into two numbered six-line stanzas, a stanza form that is known as a sestet. The basic meter is iambic tetrameter. An iambic foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, and a tetrameter has four feet, or beats. There are numerous variations on the meter, but Line 4 is a regular iambic tetrameter: “In fiery ringlets from their sleep.” 

Lines 2, 3, and 6 are iambic lines with one variation. Lines 2 and 3 begin with an anapestic foot (two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable) followed by three iambic feet: “And the yellow half-moon large and low; / And the startled little waves that leap.” Line 6 follows this pattern, although the anapest comes in the third foot rather than the first: “And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.” 

Other lines have more striking departures from the iambic metrical base. Line 1 contains only two iambic feet; the other two feet are a trochee, in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed one (“sea and”) and a spondee (two stressed syllables; “black land”). The phrase “long black land” (Line 1) slows the line down and suggests the large expanse of the land.